Many organizations are using or are considering the use of data encryption and Exchange backup and recovery in their data backup and disaster recovery (DR) plans. The use of these technologies increases security and decreases the chances of data loss due to security breaches or other potential disasters.

Andrew Warby is the senior network administrator at CRA International's Boston office. Andrew has recently been working on two projects regarding data encryption and Exchange backup and recovery. In this video, Andrew discusses why he uses data encryption and Exchange backup and recovery in his data backup plan, what he's achieved by using these technologies, and the challenges he's faced along the way.

Megan Kellett: Andrew, You recently began encrypting backups--what made you decide to do this?

Andrew Warby: The main reason we started doing this was to ensure compliance with the Massachusetts regulations regarding the protection of data in transit. A benefit for us in doing this meant it would provide better security of our backup tapes in the event of data loss.

Megan Kellett: There are a number of ways to perform encryption today, what approach are you using and what particular products have you deployed?

Andrew Warby: We are using hardware encryption based on technology incorporated in LTO-4 drives where backup windows would be too large to use software encryption. The encryption offload technology in these drives means that encrypted data takes no longer to backup then a normal job. In smaller locations, where data volume is less and hence backup windows are smaller, we use software encryption.

Megan Kellett: What challenges did you face when deploying this new technology?

Andrew Warby: The biggest challenge has been the impact on backup windows due to the decrease in speed of the backups when using software encryption. Due to this, we have had to upgrade a number of our offices to LTO-4 technology. We are looking at replicated disk based backup which would dramatically increase backup speeds, but our budget has not allowed this at present.

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